Big words and big promises should be made sure that they age well. This is a minimum requirement even in the harsh political environment: Reality shouldn’t look completely different later on. The European Union and the not-so-new federal government are on the verge of failing this test. And that in a matter of the highest importance: It is about the future of the contradiction.
So it’s about whether all those who, in a dictatorship or in far too many states, are still able to dare to resist with the wrecking ball. It is about whether the already great danger of persecution, imprisonment, torture and death for human rights lawyers, for women’s rights activists and for journalists increases immeasurably. These questions are related to how Germany and Europe are now dealing with the revelations about one of the most sophisticated surveillance systems in the world: It bears the name “Pegasus”.
Launched in 2011 by Israeli company NSO, the software is as popular with law enforcement and intelligence agencies as the latest iPhone is with Apple fans. What Cupertino in Silicon Valley is to some, the NSO headquarters in Herzliya near Tel Aviv is to the intelligence world. The reason for this is the enormous range of services Software “Pegasus”: It installs itself silently, removes all stored data, including photos and the address book. The microphone becomes a bug, the camera for video surveillance, tracking apps provide the location more reliably than any surveillance command. All unnoticed from afar.
“Pegasus” makes the past of its victims searchable, the present controllable and makes the next steps of the spied out, i.e. the future, transparent. Israeli human rights lawyer Eitay Mack says: “Because of this technology, in many places you will be able to identify the next Nelson Mandela before he even knows that he is the next Nelson Mandela.”
Finally making the dangerous world a bit safer, that was the beautiful story
The US interception service NSA had early celebrated the smartphone as the entry into the “golden age of surveillance”. It pushes the possibilities of spying to intoxicating heights. And “Pegasus” cracks them open. The United States is only too aware of the risk of this communications revolution. When Barack Obama absolutely wanted to use a mobile phone as president, he only got it after thorough processing by his secret services: you could no longer use it to make calls, take photos or listen to music. “Like a toy phone for three-year-olds,” Obama said. In Olaf Scholz’s chancellery there are wooden boxes, when the lid is opened it sounds like a broken radio at full volume. When things get confidential, cell phones end up in the box.
Repression and surveillance have always been twins. Above all, the enemies of freedom are therefore among the best customers of this privatized surveillance industry. The designers at NSO promised that the powerful “Pegasus” Trojan should only be used to hunt down criminals and terrorists. Targeted and precise, a real alternative to mass surveillance. Finally making the dangerous world a bit safer, that was the beautiful story.
Headquarters of the NSO Group in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv.
(Photo: Jack Guez/AFP)
But for years we have known – and since this summer in depressing detail – that “Pegasus” always ends up in the wrong hands. Research by the journalists’ organization “Forbidden Stories”, in which the SZ was involved, showed the traces of the “Pegasus” software in numerous cases on the mobile phones of dissidents and journalists, also in the EU member state Hungary. Since then, countless discoveries have been made, such as the use of “Pegasus” by the Polish government. There is even a suspicion that the parliamentary elections were manipulated in this way. The former EU Council President and current head of the opposition Civic Platform party, Donald Tusk, put it this way: “This is the deepest and most serious crisis in democracy since 1989.” So how are Germany and the EU responding to this threat?
At the level of the big words, nothing is missing. This promise can be found on page 146 of the Ampel coalition agreement: “Civil societies – especially journalists, activists, scientists and other human rights defenders – are indispensable for the development and maintenance of functioning communities. We undertake to strengthen these people and their work in a special way and to to protect, even in the case of cross-border persecution.” The European Parliament awarded “Forbidden Stories” for their research Daphne Caruana Galizia-Prize, named after the Maltese investigative journalist and blogger who was killed in a car bomb blast in 2017.
The super bug is more desirable than tanks or high-tech fighter planes
In the cold world of Realpolitik things are different. With the BND and the Federal Criminal Police Office, at least two German authorities are among the NSO customers. The BKA, for example, had bought it, when serious allegations against the company were already known. A single-digit million amount was paid, and the software was accepted in autumn 2020. When the deal became known through journalistic research, the authorities and the federal government blocked inquiries. Details must remain secret, any disclosure endangers the “state welfare”. As if it weren’t exactly the other way around: doing business with such companies endangers the welfare of the state.
In November, the US government surprised everyone by putting NSO on a Department of Commerce blacklist. the “entity list” was created in 1997 to brand companies whose businesses promote the construction of weapons of mass destruction. To justify the unusual action, the US government wrote that NSO had developed spy software and supplied it to foreign governments “who used this tool to maliciously monitor government officials, journalists, business people, activists, academics and embassy employees”. The echo was tremendous, especially in Israel, because NSO always exports with the permission of the local government, and research by the New York Times suggest that Israel will secure approval from states around the world by selling “Pegasus”.
The super bug is more desirable than high-tech tanks or high-tech fighter planes. Even the conclusion of the “Abraham Agreement” – the peace agreement between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain – celebrated as historic in 2020 – is said to have been made easier. The USA knew what they were doing: This is another reason why the friendly Israeli government was not even informed an hour before the decision was announced.
2011 demonstration in Tunisia’s Sidi Bouzid: After the end of the Arab Spring, evidence emerged that companies from Europe were the suppliers to pretty much every state that oppressed its citizens.
(Photo: Fethi Belaid/AFP)
The federal government tried to duck, and a government spokesman said it had “taken note of the US Department of Commerce’s decision.” In addition, no comment will be made, as it is an internal decision by the responsible authorities in the USA. Shortly thereafter, US President Joe Biden launched an “Initiative for Export Controls and Human Rights” – the export of technologies that would be used to “smother contradiction” would have to be more strictly controlled in the future. So that cases like NSO don’t repeat themselves, so that the same deals don’t continue with a new doorplate, so that sophisticated surveillance techniques don’t end up in the wrong hands. Denmark and Norway helped launch the campaign, and France, Great Britain and the Netherlands declared their support. Ironically, Germany is still missing.
That’s because the traffic light government The government says he has just taken office. One will join, of course. So far there has been no answer to the question of what that would mean: for all German authorities an end to all business with the NSO? A verification mechanism so that in future you will only buy from those who feel committed to human rights standards? What follows from the statement by the Green member of the Bundestag Konstantin von Notz that cooperation with such companies “contributes massively to global human rights violations”?
There are those in the German security authorities and even in the government who do not want new rules. The actions of the USA are hypocrisy, they could still develop the most sophisticated Trojans themselves. But Germany cannot do that and is dependent on this market. Otherwise you are deaf and blind.
Europe is on the wrong side of the matter on both sides
At the EU level, even the simplest things have sometimes been missing – such as an answer to a letter that Reporters Without Borders, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and numerous other NGOs wrote in December to the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell. In it they call for “effective steps” and sanctions to contain Pegasus. At least something seems to be moving now.
There are EU parliamentarians like the Green Hannah Neumann, who think aloud about why a sanction mechanism that is used for human rights violations could not also take effect here. Most recently, the EU sanctioned the “Wagner” group, a private Russian mercenary army accused of torture and killings. The Commission says that every conceivable way is being examined. A parliamentary committee tasked with investigating how foreign countries influence democratic processes has taken on “Pegasus”: The report praises the actions of the USA and calls for rules from the EU member states to make it impossible for NSOs and all the other companies to do shady deals do. Finally, the committee calls for the establishment of a “European Citizen Lab” in which mobile phones can be examined for traces of surveillance software. So far, the work in this area has been carried out by laboratories at the University of Toronto or at Amnesty International.
There are still few reactions and certainly no actions. Europe moves slowly. But there is something that could be made up for: The first shock at the use of such technologies came after the end of the Arab Spring. Back then, evidence surfaced that European companies were the suppliers to pretty much every state that oppressed its citizens. Edward Snowden says of these deals: “We don’t condone a commercial market for nuclear weapons, we don’t condone a commercial market for chemical or biological weapons, but when it comes to these malicious digital attack vectors, we don’t do anything.”
European countries not only let private companies – with slightly tightened export regulations – continue to export such surveillance systems, they now also import them. A confederation of states whose foundation can only be the belief in and defense of democratic values is represented on both wrong sides. That’s the status in February 2022. Let no one say they didn’t know what’s at stake here.